Nature Girl!!!!! Where are you!!!!!

I have random dreams at best. I had a dream the other night about me riding on the subway and at Royal York (I think) station, a very beautiful girl, who looked very familiar yet I don't know who, came on the train, sat next to me and started yelling "NATURE" in my ear in a very happy tone! She was wearing a U of T hoodie, was blonde, and had the bluest eyes I had ever seen. At least I think they were blue. That's my random dream, kind of funny huh?

Olympics at Vegas!

I had a conversation with my mother the other day. We're planning on leaving for the US and she says that she would like to go to Las Vegas to live and teach. I immediately thought of the F1's plans to switch venues by 2009 to have the US GP at the Casino strip in Las Vegas. When I mentioned that I would love to go to Vegas by 2009, she asked if the Olympics were taking place there. Yeah, we got flummoxed! But then the thought came to me, if the Olympics were held in Las Vegas, would it be ethical and would it even be a sound idea?

Now, I don't like to talk about conversations with my family because I am a separate entity from my family and they kind of realized that. Nothing wrong with being a separate entity. However, I thought to myself about the Olympics going to Las Vegas. It would be interesting. I thought to myself whether or not any spectators or atheletes would bother showing up to the events.

Put it this way: Las Vegas is the place to play. If you live there and work there for a living doing certain things, like office job, etc, you're bound to go to a casino, or an arcade, to play around and have fun. Also, the slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas"; isn't that a little redundant? If you're going to be broadcasting the biggest event on earth to nobody because it stays there, then what's the point? I've just realized that I've typed out 3 pointless paragraphs here. I'm just going to leave before I do anymore damage. Toodles

It's official! Dylan Avery, you're an idiot, and a big one at that!

I'm back, for no real reason. I'm still under the weather, but on the rebound. However, in my life, I have many likes and dislikes. I have many likes that I don't think about and don't really care about either because they are just the way they should be. Now, I have things that I don't like, and there aren't many things that I hate, because in a world of suspicion and hatred, why can't just one of us be blissful? I don't like to dislike people, and I don't like to hate people either, but everybody has different opinions and some people just can't tell their arse from their elbow. One of those people whom I have no respect for is a fellow, about my age, from Albany, New York, by the name of Dylan Avery.

In case you've been living under a rock (And there are a few that are), Dylan Avery wrote, directed and narrated a documentary called "Loose Change". It was a film about the Sept. 11th attacks. There are many documentaries that have that as their pretext so I see no problem. The film said that the US government orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 in order to go to war with Afghanistan and Iraq. OK, my ears are burning for more info to be sent this way. I know that the US government is fraught with overthrowing foreign governments in favour of more Washington-friendly people, so this grabs my attention. I'm going to watch this movie.

So, one beautiful spring day, I sit down and watch the film. OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY!!!! I'm burning with rage! The US government did something like this and the evidence is there. I talk to a few of my friends about this and tell them how the US government could have orchestrated such a thing. They shake me to my senses and tell me to go over the facts again. I go back to my handy dandy computer and do some more reading.

I start off with Popular Mechanics, a notable pop-engineering magazine. I see that there are some holes in what Loose Change says about the collapse of the trade centers. Still though, that's 1 fact that they might have messed up, no biggie, we all make mistakes. I see another mistake, and another mistake after that, and some more mistakes. Dylan Avery, the writer, director and narrator of Loose Change says that he's spreading the truth, but all these mistakes at the same time? I think we can safely say that he's just attention whoring by the 3rd minute of the film. Even science, which is the best litmus paper test of our time says that Dylan Avery isn't telling the truth.

I'm not upset that Dylan Avery played me (Which I made it so easy for him), and plays many others still. I'm upset that Dylan Avery and the rest of the Loose Change people haven't looked at all the facts. With information being so freely available, how come you don't go on Google and search for the truth. Scholarly journals are more available to the general public today than at any point in history, yet you go to the one journal which has 9/11 deniers as the peer-reviewers (I can't remember the name of the journal off the top of my head).

Dylan Avery definetely made the rounds in the news media after the film. After doing the research and watching him speak, I realized that he had the same personality as an uneducated person. The way he spoke during interviews showed the type of person he was. When he was speaking without a script, you could see and hear how naive and uneducated he sounded. This is the person that everyone believes as the truth seeker of 9/11? It's really sad.

You can go ahead and call me a NeoCon, and I'll tell you that I'm anything but. I am vehemently opposed to Bush's policies and was actually smiling when Hugo Chavez called him 'el Diablo' today at the UN. That's me, see you on the other side of next time!

Religion, racing and I'm sick :(

I'm back, for no real reason. Firstly, I'm pissed! Pissed off at the fact that people don't accept the Pope's apology for the words he said regarding Islam. Many Muslims accepted the apology, but the American media make it look like his apology fell on deaf ears. The extremist Muslims of the world are turning into extremist Jews of the world after Prince Harry's Nazi costume debacle. Religion is merely the foundation to curb our fears of death with promises of the afterlife and to make us better people. Yet, it is the one thing that is supposed to bring love and peace in this world of ours, yet it does the exact opposite. More people have died in wars in the name of religion rather than wars in the name of politics and the right way of life. Either way, this makes the world a worse place to live and since I'm a westernized Muslim, things could get worse for me.

Now, in the world of F1 racing, a sport where Nike doesn't have sponsorship and is the richest and most advanced sport in the world, the great Michael Schumacher retired from F1 racing. However, much to my chagrin, the man to take his place would be Kimi Raikkonen, the Flying Finn. Kimi Raikkonen is a good driver, but I wish he could've stayed at the Mercedes Benz racing team (That'll be the name next year) for one more year so that he could race alongside Fernando Alonso so that we could see whose really the better driver. Seriously though, Kimi is the Flying Finn regardless and I'm sure he will do well at Ferrari. Speaking of which, Shell brought over an F1 Ferrari to display at Galbraith and I was there to snap a few photos of it. Here are a few:










Finally, I'm sick :(. That's not cool.

Frosh WEEK!!!!!

It was FROSH WEEK!!!! The upside, I wasn't a froshie! I was a leader, somewhere I belong! I'm a Behind the Scenes Leader, that's where the actual leading is! I was working for the SAC, while the froshes were at their respective colleges and were having fun doing their own thing. I was working for the SAC to prepare for the grand finale in which all the colleges come together and parade through the streets of Toronto and hold up rush hour traffic on a very beautiful and sunny friday afternoon. This was better than my frosh week for two reasons: I'm dying to lead, never to follow; and I know people this time and we all got together and had our own fun! Ian and I had the *ahem* honour to lead the University College people along with Ian's girlfriend from Western. During the parade, the official photographer for Blue Crew, a really nice guy named Faraz, joined us and snapped many photos of the parade, including many of me holding the sign for University College and wearing the skin tight SAC shirt (Remind me to express my displeasure to SAC later on!).

Of course, there was so much more than this SAC parade at the university. Ian and I got paid big money to post posters for the Metric concert all over and anywhere on campus simply to get rid of them all. I was actually surprised that there were people who knew what Metric was and for that matter, like Metric as well! I had never heard of Metric until we had to put up all those posters! What surprised me more is that people wanted those posters and took them from Ian and me, which was a good thing since I didn't want to post up 2000+ posters all over campus, but we did anyways! That was the little bit of me that didn't lead, but followed, on my own terms though.

Finally, I have thoroughly enjoyed being Blue Crew and will do it again in a heartbeat. There are volunteering hours, but I never needed them in the first place but I'll still hang around and do more stuff! I thought that my only job in university would be studying and studying some more with no opportunity to get involved. Well, this year, I have become totally involved and I have made many many many new friends from all over. University is turning out to be the most interesting experience for me so far, until other things come around!

The increasing shrinking of the Gender gap

THANK YOU GOD!!!!! Racing isn't exactly what you would call a sausage fest anymore! In these days of women's rights and the feminazi occupation of all things masculine, except for the stand up urinal, racing was widely believed, mainly by both sexes, that it was a fraternal organization, and not the usual matriarchy of 'female' sports such as croquet, synchronized swimming and dish washing (I'm totally going to get slapped for that last one)*! But, there are those that are asking "Sheiban, why are you GLAD that racing isn't a fraternity?". I put it this way, I'm Sheiban, 'nuff said. It's not exactly easy for me to find a person of the opposite sex who likes things that I like, such as automotive racing (Of mainly European and International leagues. I stay clear of North America when it comes to racing, unless it's the ALMS, but that's really not American in the first place), writing blogs, going for long walks on the beach, watching movies together on rainy days, going out at night, and all that other stuff that women claim to like, and yet it doesn't bother me. But, today, I met a lovely lady at St. Mike's who was so into F1, but hadn't a clue who Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Pedro de la Rosa or Michael Schumacher were. Still though, it's a start, and she also thought that Toro Rosso had a nice looking car. You're entitled to your opinions, I'm not going to say anything about that. I think I can safely conclude that there ARE women who are into auto racing, and the sophisticated and more technical type, than one might think, and they're also NOT engineers!

Now, when it comes to women, I used to hastily jump to conclusions when I met a 'perfect match'. If you're one of those who is reading this and was part of my early thoughts that you're the one (and I mean this in the most innocent way), well, I have reformed and letting this so called faith take control, not that I have much faith in it to begin with! However, with this lack of faith to begin with, I'm NOT AT ALL bothered because I would rather see the world and make my mark rather than having a woman fall into my arms, not that there's anything wrong with having a woman fall into your arms, unless you trip her! It's just me, and I can't help being me. I think women are the essence of our world, and they are indeed the bearers and beginners of life.

So, why should women be excluded from certain things? I think they choose to exclude themselves from these things because of societal pressures to be 'proper' women. I'm happy that in this world, there are many, many women that break away from these barriers of society such as housewifing (It's not a term, but it works), male sexing (Use your imagination and don't think of anything dirty while you're at it!), child rearing (That's the only proper term I have), and MRStering in university or college. Either way, good job to all the women on the planet, now you have something better to do rather than sit around and look beautiful all day, which was a perk, but is just not working anymore these days!

*I'm a part time chauvinist, for the record. It's not in me to be chauvinistic, it's society, or, if you're from South Park, BLAME CANADA!

Bomb threats, borders, school and some space crashing...

Well, I'm back and where can I start? Well, on Thursday, I ran into a bomb threat with my really good friend, Myck. We just met out of the blue and as we were talking, we discovered that an area of St. George and Bloor was cordoned off. We were scrathing our heads wondering what on earth could be the problem. We found out later that there was a fellow in a taxi cab over on the street claiming to have a bomb. Of course, I took this as paranoia at it's finest. However, after staking out a great vantage point, we were literally 20 metres from the cab, and closer than any other police officer would dare go. We found our refuge within the University of Toronto High School. As we watched, a cameraman from Global TV spotted us and brought his camera in to shoot. With all the hype happening, we really thought that there was seriously a bomb threat. We could hear at least 3 helicopters flying overhead, even though I could only see one. After almost 1.5 hours, we were told by the police that the threat of a bomb is 'imminent' and we had to evacuate the school where we were. We left, and saw a sniper approaching the cab. I seriously thought that this would end in bloodshed. The sniper disappeared around the corner, and we heard a really loud bang, and pigeons flew everywhere. 'That's it', I thought, the standoff was over and they had shot the guy in the cab whom he claimed that he had a bomb. I thought that this was over, but from the very limited view that I had, I saw the police take a black guy and hose him down. It turned out that the police had actually shot tear gas into the cab and then they wrestled him down. It turned out that there was no bomb at all, and that life went back to normal in the end. It was a very interesting sight to see. I got to see the police's little bomb disposal robot thingy, which strangely enough, reminded me of R2D2 of Star Wars fame. All it was missing was a larger golden droid which could have been saying obscenities!

Next order of business, the border, more specifically, the one with the US. Now, my family has US Visas and they want to go to live in the US. Great! Nothing wrong with living in the US, just prepared to get shot when you're in Europe! I'm just kidding! Anyways, we were visiting my cousin in N. Kentucky at the time, and thought it would be a great idea to try and get our Green Cards. When we get to the Detroit-Windsor border, we were surprised at how mean and inhospitable the female border guard was! There were some things we couldn't understand at all since she had such a thick Louisiana accent as well! She questioned us so meticulously and kept twisting our words around that we left angry and disappointed. We tried again this week by going to New York State at the Niagara Falls crossing. Over there, the Customs official was so nice and even shook our hands to welcome us to America. What a great feeling!

Now, final order of business is the upcoming period that dominates 2 (3 if you're not in university) seasons. I'm talking about school. I start university in over a week and with a clean slate of all things! I will be taking a lot of courses that I now like, since I'm in third year and I can choose whatever I desire. I got a lot of great courses, and next week, I won't have a moment's rest since it's that great time in a first year's life known as Frosh Week, and I'm one of the Frosh Week co-ordinators! No rest for the weary, at least for me, since I have just finished summer school and I'll be going back to school soon as well...

Now, as I was writing this blog, I realized that the American and European Space Agencies seem to enjoy crashing their probes into things! I just read on the BBC about the ESA wanting to crash their SMART 1 satellite into the moon, since they want to end it! I think it's all great and NASA did a thing like that last year when crashing a probe into an asteroid, and you should've seen the explosion as well! It seems like space agencies are dying to get attention, and they will crash their multimillion dollar probe into space bodies to be seen! The article can be seen here!